“Even the woodpecker owes his success to the fact that he uses his head and keeps pecking away until he finishes the job he starts.” Coleman Cox
When I was a young girl, maybe ten, I discovered a joy in stringing words together to write a story. I loved words. I loved reading. I loved writing. I didn’t love talking all that much back then. While these days I enjoy talking, especially about writing and books, then I was a very shy little girl. But once I got a notebook and a pen, I was ready to spill out some words.
The world is full of little girls with the dream of writing. I’ve met many of them and heard from plenty of others on social media. But what separates the ones who dreamed and didn’t finish their stories and the ones who did?
“Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent.” …William Cobbett
I guess that goes for girls, boys, and women too. The ones who chase their dreams and find success are the ones who keep going when they are tired and discouraged the same as they keep going when everything is coming up roses.
I’ve always thought perseverance can be the most important attribute a writer can have. It takes perseverance to finish a book length piece of fiction. It takes perseverance to finish any length piece of fiction and then go back and rewrite it until it’s right.
It takes perseverance to keep on trying when rejections come knocking on your door and editors aren’t loving the work you’re doing. I’ve walked through that valley a few years. Perseverance is what keeps you going when you entertain thoughts of quitting. I’ve been there too when I wondered if I wanted to keep writing if my writing never found readers. I guess I did because I did keep thinking up stories and writing them down. Perseverance makes you believe that the next book, the next story might be the one. And finally it was for me – now over forty times since I’ve written that many books that have been published.
I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature. ~John D. Rockefeller
The picture up at the top is me after my first novel was published in 1978. It was not the first book I wrote. Instead it was the third book I wrote. But I found out having that first book published didn’t mean I could forget about keeping on writing when things weren’t going well. More books were written that didn’t find readers. I kept writing until my perseverance paid off and now I’m blessed to have some faithful readers who enjoy my stories. I’m still writing and hoping for that next story to be another one readers will want to read.
In my last release, A Chance for Kallie Mae, I gave Kallie Mae the indomitable spirit a reviewer mentions in a Publisher Weekly review. Even when things were difficult she didn’t give up on the dream to someday learn to read. I like to think all my main characters have that indomitable spirit to go after what they want and find a good ending.
Me, I’m still going after my dream. Still writing. Still hoping to have more readers discover my stories. Still hoping for fresh ideas that will feature those indomitable characters who will become story people you can take to your heart and cheer on in their life journeys.
So, the same as that woodpecker in the quote mentioned above, I’ll keep pecking along on my keyboard and try to string some right words together to make a new story.
What other attributes do you think are important to success? For a writer? Or for whatever you want to do?